DU student polls: Here’s why women’s colleges shun elections

Dominant student parties don't consider women students politically relevant.

WrittenBy:Dyuti Sudipta
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With elections for the Delhi University Students’ Union (DUSU) to be held on September 12, there’s hardly two weeks left for student organisations to campaign but they have kicked it off with full gusto. Being a DU undergraduate student for three years, I know what wins in DUSU; it is plain and simple, money and muscle rule DUSU polls with the add-on of regionalist sentiments. This may sound like the storyline of Anurag Kashyap’s Gulaalbut it is not. It is a far more dangerous situation, because this is reality. DUSU elections are considered to be launchpads for a successful career in national politics. Thus the cutthroat competition to win tickets, the desperation to spend crores on something that lasts 10 days, at its best.

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The subtle fight for votes by wooing students through different means begin even before the cut-off lists are out. It begins with the opening days, continues through the days of admission assistance when hundreds of students come to fill offline forms. From setting up kiosks for assisting students to dismantling kiosks of weaker students’ bodies, the ploys to win the election begin. By the last week of July, when the new students arrive and old ones return, the walls of both the North and South campuses along with those situated outside either are filled with ugly spray-painted names of random people you have never heard of, seen, known of. The next stage is when the students are settling in over August, there are freshers’ parties thrown by students’ organisations, at least those with that kind of money and manpower to hire multiple famous singers and DJs, namely NSUI and ABVP, the student wings of Indian National Congress and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, respectively, according to their Wikipedia pages, though ABVP’s website suggests they are apparently “above partisan politics”.

By the time the freshers are done with them, it will be already mid-August. Most of them are from small-town middle-class families and still trying to figure out the campus and college life amidst the cultural shock and internal assessments. They will have no clue about the political scene on campus except the names and the faces of the people who invited them to the parties and who they see wearing expensive clothes and roam in SUVs with enviable self-confidence. There are two other organisations contesting elections that are left leaning, namely AISA and SFI, the students’ wings of the CPI-ML (Liberation) and the CPI(M). The Chhatra Yuva Sangharsh Samiti (CYSS), the students’ wing of the Aam Aadmi Party, also contested the DUSU elections for a few years until they decided to withdraw last year.

As election dates close in, the season for open bribery begins in DU. It varies in degrees, beginning from distributing free kajal and lip balms in girls’ colleges and PGs to distribution of bags, pens, diaries to movie tickets and adventure club trips, to a free flow of alcohol and drugs. Yes, DU in election season sees it all. All these happen with utter disregard for the Lyngdoh Committee Recommendations (LCR), which laid down the guidelines dictating the rules and regulations of students’ union elections. For example, despite printed materials being forbidden for campaigning, one can see white printed fliers with the names and ballot numbers of the candidates on the roads in front of colleges, printed posters pasted on the walls of the university buildings, and the layers on road become thicker with the election approaching. To secure earlier ballot numbers as they tend to secure more votes from unsure voters, the practice of changing one’s name with prefixes like AAA, .a.a etc used to be a dominant practice in DU until last year after a rule was introduced to stop this practice. The budgetary restrictions per candidate are never paid heed to. While LCR put a limit of the maximum permitted expenditure per candidate at Rs. 5000, the election budget of organisations exceeds the limit by 10 to 100 times, depending on the organisation we are talking about.

In the whole process, a very noticeable thing is the absence of women in most students’ organisations, especially those indulging in such huge extravaganzas to secure their vote bank. Right from the spray-painted names on the walls, from the SUV driving bunch flying fliers, you hardly see any woman campaigning for NSUI and ABVP except for in a few women’s colleges that take part in the DUSU elections, where men are not permitted entry easily.

A majority of the candidates who file nominations are men, in ABVP panels, there is token representation for one woman, it is similar with NSUI and CYSS, in their last year of contesting elections, had put up two women and two men as their candidates. In the two left leaning organisations, AISA and SFI, we see women participating a little more than the other organisations, but still not enough. In the manifesto of the student organisations, there is hardly any women-centric issue being brought up. The main problem with this also lies in the formation of DUSU and the number of colleges that are affiliated to it. Of 22 women’s colleges affiliated to DU, only five colleges i.e Aditi Mahavidyalaya, Bhagini Nivedita College, Lakshmibai College, Miranda House and S.P. Mukherji College for Women take part in the DUSU elections. Roughly 78% of the women who are studying in the various women’s colleges in DU do not have any political participation in the students’ union election of their own university. While we boast of the high number of women studying in DU compared to other universities, thanks to many women’s colleges, they are seen as a population politically irrelevant by the people contesting the elections. Even in coed colleges, an election is looked at as a hazard by women for the hooliganism and violence that comes with it.

The election culture in DU is very hyper-masculine and laced with violence. Right from inflicting physical violence upon candidates of other organisations, especially those with limited means and resources, to sending threats of physical harm and abduction as means of pressurising potential candidates to withdraw nominations, to slandering and slut-shaming, everything takes place here to discourage people from opposition.

And this is one of the major reason why most women’s college administrations do not want to be a part of the DUSU elections and  most women studying in coed colleges tend to remain absent on the day of elections. As a result, organisations contest election without any focus on the issues that concern women on the campus at all. For instance, in North Campus or South Campus, you won’t find public washrooms for women. Being in North Campus for three years during my graduation, I have suffered my share, the only washroom is near Vishwavidyalaya Metro Station, and if you’re lucky to be around Arts Faculty, you can use the library washroom, or you have to control your bladder for a painfully long duration. Another example is the vast stretch of road behind St. Stephen’s and adjacent to the Ridge being very inadequately lit, and we keep on hearing about incidents of molestations, assaults, attempts to abduct but there is no attempt, neither on the part of the university authority nor the students’ union to bring attention to this.

Another issue is that of women’s hostels. Most coed colleges in DU do not have women’s hostels. This with the ill reputation of Delhi as being unsafe for women, gives rise to the raging PG business in and around colleges. The few colleges that have women’s hostels along with men’s ones, have discriminatory rules against women regarding entry timings and the fees that often range as much as double the fees men pay for their hostel accommodation. In such cases, we have never seen members of NSUI or ABVP who have been in DUSU since 2014 come out on the streets to protest, or agitate, instead what we have seen is right outside the DUSU office, a huge hoarding of their candidate doing advertisement for a private PG. DUSU for organisations are looked at as an opportunity to be recognised in the party high command without doing any substantial work ever along with a great scope to indulge in corruption and making money.

In the list of expenditure of DUSU for 2016-17, close to Rs 21 lakh have been spent for tea, biscuits, and photostats. DUSU is the place where they can think of regaining some of the money they have spent getting here and that’s exactly what they use DUSU for. The only times I have remembered ABVP’s presence on the street have been the ones where they have either inflicted violence upon groups of students like in Ramjas, or on professors as in Kirori Mal College when Muzaffarnagar Baaki Hai was to be screened or even more recent case in SRCC, banning a street play by Ankoor, the theatre society of SGBT Khalsa College, because it dealt with certain contemporary social issues that caused the ABVP discomfort.  

After winning the election in 2014, the first thing done on part of DUSU was to organise a human chain with posters and placards against consensual interfaith marriages termed as ‘Love Jihad’ and live-in relationships. Of the three years they have been swiping the poles in DUSU, there has been no involvement of DUSU in any pro-student activity. The responsibility of a students’ union is to address the problems students encounter including reasonably priced accommodation, transport, safe environment on campus. But for the past several years, we have seen it being limited to conducting freshers’ parties and organising annual fest. These are secondary priorities, whereas being the bridge between the authority and the students and conveying the students’ concerns to the authority should be the primary duties of a responsible students’ union and we, as students of DU, have failed miserably in giving ourselves the students’ union that we deserve, that will take up our concerns, our problems and take part in finding constructive solutions to the problems. We have to break the chain of electing such representatives for ourselves, we deserve better and I hope the trend begins changing from this very time, for we deserve better.

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